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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother’: When Parents Are Afraid Of Their Children

Most parents in the U.S. have spent the past few days imagining what it would be like to be the mother or father of one of the 20 schoolchildren murdered on Dec. 14 in Connecticut. Each detail that emerges from that stricken community brings many of us to tears. And of course we think, What if a madman came to our child’s school in a rage with a gun?

But there’s another group of parents who watched this horror story unfold with an opposite and perhaps more excruciating thought: What if the madman were my child?

Parents of mentally ill children and young adults can’t say they are afraid of their own children or admit that they know what it’s like to have bright children whose rages could, under circumstances they can’t predict, lead them to kill innocent people the way Adam Lanza is alleged to have done at Sandy Hook Elementary. And they can’t find comfort in the wake of a national tragedy by sharing their feelings around the watercooler like the rest of us.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really feel for this woman. My 15 year old nephew is mentally ill and her story could have been written about him. He has been in a residential treatment facility for three months because of his actions, and he will likely be there for another 6-8 months. While at home, multiple times he has threatened to kill everyone in the house (they do not have any guns/weapons and they keep all kitchen knives locked up), he is constantly running away and he has wreaked total havoc within the house. They have disciplined him (just as they have disciplined the other children in the house), but nothing works with him. He shows no remorse for anything. I really fear that one day we'll be reading about him in the paper.

Anonymous said...

I don't imagine any of those other parents took their children to a shooting range and taught them how to kill.

Anonymous said...

why do they keep using the word "alleged"?